NASCAR: Justin Haley makes team history twice in two series at Daytona

During this past weekend at Daytona International Speedway, Justin Haley made history for two NASCAR teams, one in the Xfinity Series and one in the Cup Series.

Justin Haley entered this past NASCAR weekend at Daytona International Speedway with somewhat of a chip on his shoulder after what would have been the first victory of his Xfinity Series career in just his first Xfinity Series start was stripped from him at the track last July.

He didn’t need to go below the double yellow line to make his winning pass on the front stretch coming to the checkered flag, but he did, and as a result, he was penalized and dropped to 18th place.

Haley even took to Twitter to state that the four-turn, 2.5-mile (4.023-kilometer) high-banked Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida was the site of his first Xfinity Series win.

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The 20-year-old Winamac, Indiana native drives full-time as a rookie for Kaulig Racing in the Xfinity Series, and he nearly got redemption from last year’s race at the track on Friday night. But he came up just 0.109 seconds shy of the win by finishing in second place behind teammate Ross Chastain.

However, he still made history for the team, albeit being one-upped by Chastain. Entering this race, Kaulig Racing had never finished a race in higher than fourth place in team history. Austin Dillon was responsible for recording the team-best fourth place finish in this year’s March race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Chastain and Haley both changed this, and A.J. Allmendinger originally did as well before he was stripped of his third place finish and disqualified from this race after his #10 Chevrolet failed post-race inspection.

In Sunday’s Cup Series race at the track, Haley did more of the same, but in different fashion on many levels.

This race marked Haley’s third career Cup Series start and third start of the 2019 season, all driving for Spire Motorsports, the series’ newest team that entered the sport ahead of the 2019 season. In two previous starts, he finished in 32nd and 34th place, and Spire Motorsports themselves entered the race without a single top 21 finish, without a single top 27 finish when taking the word “finish” literally, and no lead-lap finishes.

Haley proceeded to win the race.

A lot of things went his way at the end, including a huge wreck that collected a lot of contenders, some drivers deciding to come into the pits right away after this wreck, others deciding to do so thinking that the race would go back green after staying on the track hoping that the rain would start to fall and that the race would be deemed official, and Haley not pitting.

It then included lightning strikes that continuously reset the 30-minute lightning clock, rain that fell on the track on turns three and four so that when the lightning clock finally ran out, the track still wasn’t ready for racing, drivers being sent back to their cars to continue the race, lightning striking again for the first time in more than a half hour to reset the 30-minute clock once more, and then the race finally being called after several hours.

Nevertheless, Haley won the race, a race of many firsts for arguably the least competitive team in the Cup Series garage.

After finishing in second place for a NASCAR Xfinity Series team that had never previously recorded a top three finish and winning a Cup Series race for a team that had never previously finished in the top 21 (technically never actually finished in the top 27), it is safe to say that this past weekend at Daytona International Speedway was a special one for Justin Haley; it was certainly a historic one for him and both of his underdog teams.